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When Prudence Bushnell, a former U.S. ambassador and CEO of Sage Associates was growing up, there were no female leaders for her to look up to. Those women who did assume a leadership position were often ridiculed or not taken seriously. Despite this lack of role models, Bushnell became a leader for hundreds of Foreign Service workers, and she has served as the dean of the Leadership and Management School at the Foreign Service Institute.

On Feb. 26, 2012, an unarmed 17-year-old African American man named Trayvon Martin was fatally shot in Sanford, Fla. At the time the case did not attract much media attention, though it has since become of the most covered news stories of 2012. Daniel Maree, a senior digital strategist for advertising agency McCann New York, sparked a massive movement and mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to show their support for the Martin family and for racial equality generally. He spoke at Hamilton on Oct. 17 about his vision for the younger generation’s potential to create change in the world.

With hundreds of Walmarts and large malls spreading across the United States, shoppers can enjoy more convenient, sometimes cheaper goods, from groceries to car tires. While smooth highways bridge millions of Americans to glossy new shopping opportunities every year, the nation places less value on the quiet pastoral state that it once treasured. Marty Cain ’13 is exploring this dichotomy of lifestyles for his senior fellowship, The Poetic Art of Rural Decay: Reinterpreting the Pastoral with a Surreal Sense of Place.

An interesting aspect to bike riding is how a bicycle changes how the cyclist experiences his or her surroundings. In an urban area, biking can help define the relationship between cyclist and city. McKayla Dunfey ’13 is exploring this connection through her Senior Fellowship, titled “The Bicycle’s Influence: Changing Perceptions of Place and Space in Urban Environments.”

“The art world” is an abstract concept, consisting of careers in everything from law to painting to history. To an undergraduate, the concept of entering this fickle, fast-paced arena may be overwhelming or intimidating. During Fallcoming Weekend, Associate Professor of Art History Deborah Pokinski led an alumni panel discussion on “Careers in Art,” attracting dozens of students seeking advice. The discussion was held in the newly opened Wellin Museum of Art.

At a time when many consider climate change to be one of the most pressing challenges facing the world’s population, it remains unclear which course of action will do the most good for the planet and its inhabitants. Michael Greenstone, the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and director of the Hamilton Project, discussed this issue during a lecture from The Sustainability Program of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center.

More than 150 Hamilton students took part in this year’s annual Hamilton Association for Volunteering Outreach and Charity (HAVOC) Make a Difference Day. Dressed in bright green HAVOC t-shirts, students signed up for a wide range of volunteer opportunities to engage in for the day, from homes for the elderly to animal sanctuaries.

In the hours before a math assignment is due at Hamilton, students can be seen sitting around professors’ offices and spanning the nearby hallway. Collaboration is encouraged, and so they seek help from one another and from their professor to finish up the homework. The work is not easy, but the sense of accomplishment upon handing in each assignment is fulfilling.

Students enrolled in government 219 and 221, both taught by Visiting Instructor of Government Andy Milstein, got a feel for such slow-moving and hard-earned developments  in Congress during a weeks-long simulation of the legislative process. The experiment ended on Nov. 29 with a meeting to present and vote on the bills that the students designed.

Can the disparate fields of academia and spiritual fulfillment ever work toward the same goal? Does the never-ending quest for knowledge push matters of religion and spirituality to the periphery? These questions lie at the center of massive cultural and institutional shifts in education and society, particularly in the West, that occurred over the past two centuries. Yale Law professor Anthony Kronman addressed the spiritual-academic gap that America faces today in a Hamilton lecture, “Education in an Age of Disenchantment.”